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The Achievements and the Days

Book IV. The Diversity of European Spiritual Histories

Roland Maes

Copyright © 2011 by Roland Maes

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Acknowledgments

This work would never have concretized without the help of Ernst Van Ingen. I thank him heartily for his assistance and patience.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 14. Progress to Humanness14.1 Intelligence14.2 Reason and Emotion14.3 The Human Self-evaluation14.4 Strive to Reason: The Enlightenment14.5 Demographic Inflation14.6 Patriotism versus Nationalism14.7 Racial Superiority14.8 Social Darwinism and Civilization14.9 Slavery versus Liberty14.10 Contemporary Violence

Chapter 15. The spirituality of Europe15.1 Judaism15.2 The Evangels15.3 Islam15.4 The Fall of Islam15.5 Seeds of Tragedy

Chapter 16. The Creation of the French Realm16.1 The Fall of Rome

16.2 The Franks16.3 The Imperial Law16.4 The conquest of the known world by Nomads16.5 Francium16.6 The kingdom of France16.7. The Philosophy of History

About the author

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Frontispiece: PORNOCRACY, aquarelle by F. Rops, 1878.

A pig with a golden tail leads a blinded provocative woman to a new adventure while her three former loves fly away.

Rops (1833-1898) was educated by the Jesuits but rejected their moral concepts at puberty. He lived with two sisters who shared him with additional transient female conquests in a decadent Paris immerged in macabre pleasures.

In the spirit of that specific French period, the pursuit of pleasure was paid for by poverty and ruin, generated by the greedand cruelty of woman, and by fevers, sadness, illness and death generated by exhaustion and sexually transmitted diseases as gonorrhea and syphilis (HIV raged only in later times). Rops heldthe Devil as the master of sex, which corroded and disaggregated the body: “man is possessed by woman and woman is possessed by the Devil. Woman inspires great things but also prevents their realization”. Rops personally assisted to the rout of the French imperial armies at Sedan (1870) and attributed the decadence of the Latin countries to the overwhelming obsession of man by woman: according to him, the greater the importance and power of woman in a civilization, the greater its decadence. The most martial, brutal, misogynist civilizations are the most successful. Today, we assist to the decadence of some Western countries of Europe but nobody is going to attribute this downfall to obsession with sex: other reasons are at stake.

This aquarelle summarizes the subject of this essay. The first question is if evolution is the reconnoitering of unsuspected paths that draw unknowing explorers to them. This is discussed inthe first books. The following books treat of the second question, which challenges the positive role played by sex in theevolution of mammalians once the hominid level of cognitive development had been reached. Has the sexual drive not overreached his goal and has it not become a hindrance to furtherprogresses? Should it not be kept in bounds and repressed insteadof tolerated and magnified? Do bestial pulsations jeopardize Man’s evolvement toward a humane destiny? I have been asked, for general acceptance of this art piece, to cover the model according to Lev. 18, 17 because nudity under any form is offensive to a large segment of the world population. Sex appearsto be a central preoccupation of Humans and this subject is discussed at length in chapter 15. 2.3. The third question is of contemporary importance: the place given by various civilizationsto love and trust. The immense majority of the civilizations thriving today distrust each other while their populations distrust their governing elites as well as each other. Is the trust and love in an union between man and woman established on afoot of equality, and the love lend by parents to their children throughout their education, and the management of the city and ofthe nation in a manner that commands the adhesion of the governed, not the key to an evolvement of a human group to a higher level of humaneness? I will defend the thesis that the Saxons and Normans, and more specifically the Netherlands, are the founders of a humane modernity.

It is currently fashionable to underline the contributions and achievements of other civilizations, which pretend to be, as muchas some nations pertaining to the Western world, major contributors to civilization. One should not put the notions "civilization" and "culture" on the same level. It is of course evident that there was a general progress in modernity registeredfrom the years 1400-1500 A.D on, in diverse cultures, as proven by the naval expedition of China along the East African Coast. However, China closed its frontiers, as did Japan and also Francein the 18th century, restricting the entrance of foreigners as

well as the exit of their nationals. This is not a progress in civilization.

Islam also pretends to have made significant inroads in science and philosophy and claims to have been the indispensable link between Greece, Rome and Europe, to which it claims to have transferred the civilization of the Ancients. This claim undervalues the contributions of Byzantium and of the Germanic tribes that occupied the Occident during the centuries that followed the fall of Rome: Goths, Saxons and Vandals were by no means Barbaric, with the exception of the Franks, who were indeedsavages and remained so throughout the centuries, as I will show.

Introduction to book IV

It is consensually assumed that all Christian nations evolving inthe West after the crumbling down of Romania were governed by theChristian monism, i.e. an equal respect for spiritual and material matters. Nothing is further from the truth. The destruction of Christendom gave the possibility to different political entities to rise, which took divergent paths. Some remained for a long time integrated in an Empire while others developed a national awareness and followed a national destiny, which was however predetermined in that one may not ignore the origins. The temptation is great for rulers to snub the liberty of adhesion of their subjects and consider their neighbors as preys. At the limit, the moving philosophy is a deification of action, violence, power, contempt and hatred. I will show in the following chapters that the Frankish heritage of deceit, gluttonyand greed characterized the foreign and domestic policy of France, which influenced in a considerable way the destiny of Europe. During centuries, the State developed a nationalistic mentality well in advance of other political communities and applied terror to achieve submission and expansion. This drive became conscious when the king Henry IV claimed “all what speaks French is mine”. He was intelligent enough to respect the libertyof adhesion of his subjects and allowed Protestants to practice their religion. It rose with Louis XIV, who ruled according to

"une foi, une loi, un roi" (i.e. one creed, one law, one king). It went a step further with Napoleon who crowned himself emperor.National egoism impregnated thereafter the foreign policy of England, spilled over to Germany and reached an apotheosis with Hitler, who best knew how to exploit antinomies, assertive creedsand elementary logic blended with passion to enforce the "ein Land, ein Volk, ein Fuehrer" credo (i.e. one country, one people,one leader). Action based on assertive creeds clad in the ornaments of stark logic ended up in nihilistic terror worshipingviolence and cruelty.

In this book IV, the first chapter exposes some of the progressesmade by the human race to reach higher levels of humaneness, the second chapter exposes the impact various spiritual approaches exercised on this progress and the last chapter treats of the emergence of France, which remained true to its Frankish heritageand rejected the Christian monism.

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Chapter 14. Progress to Humanness

In this chapter, I review some conditions that are needed to access to a higher level of humaneness, and also the conditions that cause either a standstill or else a regression to barbarism.Liberalism, consensus and tolerance allowed the emergence of the West but this emergence was not extent to all the countries that pertained to the Western culture.

14.1. Intelligence

14.1.1 Biological Intelligence versus internal coherence of thought

Human responses to specific stimulations are governed by instinct. The human species, as other animal species, responds basically in a fixed-action pattern, in an automatic way, withoutflexibility, to the requirements of its biotope. Problems not

foreseen by Primate evolutionary trends are solved in an appallingly and embarrassingly stupid way. Many mammalian and bird species are however able to modulate and improve the instinctual responses by a process of learning. In humans, this learning process culminates in an individual intelligence. Intelligence is the individual drive focused towards the disinterested knowledge and understanding of the world. It is an attempt to resolve, by this disinterested knowledge, newly arisensituations that cannot be resolved by instinctual or automatic behavioral patterns.

The human cognitive development proceeds according to two lines, of which one is deeply rooted into the phyletic line of the vertebrates and the other apparently restricted to the human species.

Biological intelligence compares a new situation with older experiences, with statistical evaluation of the results of an action. The retrieving of past relevant experiences and their adaptation to solve the new problem generates new solutions. I developed this in chapter 6. Starting from the level of Reptiles,vertebrates exercise this biological intelligence. Turtles practice it when they are challenged by a visual problem. Children learn their mother language by this means. It is appliedat all human cultural levels.

However, the human brain also elaborates symbols based on abstract rules. This type of intelligence, already detectable in 7 months-old infants, consists in the elaboration of rules of logic and is divorced from biological references. The trial and error mode of apprehension of a new situation is thereby ignored.In this case, the apprehension of a new situation proceeds through a reasoning that follows an internal coherence of thought, without any reference to past experiences nor to reality.

These two types of cognitive development are not equally applied in all the cultures that compose the Western civilization and this differential approach to cognition specifies the level of Humanization reached. A choice is perpetually made between Logic and Suppleness, Geometry and Adaptation, the Absolute and the

Concrete, Submission and Liberty, Order and Growth, Stability andMovement. Some communities opted for the first terms of these alternatives, others for the second. In these last ones, scientists are preferred to lawyers, entrepreneurs to bankers, cottage gardens to French gardens and the challenge of the unknown to the security of natural borders. In Science, preference will be given in one case to feedback mechanisms, computers and statistics, in the other to geometry, clocks and rigorously defined automates. In one case, we will see a theory of Evolution (Darwin, Huxley), in the other the elaboration of a Systematic and a Classification (Buffon and Cuvier).

14.1.2 The exercise of individual intelligence

The expression of individual intelligence and the exercise of reason are among the most difficult acts a human being can accomplish because all the forces of inertia, and instincts of dominance and subservience, oppose it. Before two people acknowledge each other as human, there is a temptation to subordinate the other by snubbing the liberty of adhesion that isat the basis of the human order. The cohesion and security of human groups is maintained by the application of tremendous social pressures on challengers of the mainstreams of thought. This is a biological and social imperative of Primates that view group approaches as the best means of survival. With such a mentality, reason is not the master faculty. Primitive societies and societies under stress are intolerant of people endowed with more insight than others because such societies are unsure of themselves and geniuses are a dislocation factor that they cannottolerate. These societies consider the superior or original mind as being beset by the devil and suppress it. Paradoxically, they thus destroy the means of renewal that they usually seek by disciplined, concerted joint actions. What saved Christendom fromstultification was that, unique among revealed Truths, the Christian Faith relied on four gospels written by four different people, each with a different cultural background, in different languages, well after God had delivered his message. It was understood that this message demanded additional explanations, which left room for the exercise of individual intelligence in protected places, as abbeys.

Abelard (1079-1142) demanded the right to follow his own logic within a theocratic civilization of consensus. He was banished first to Brittany, i.e. outside the French royal domain and laterto Cluny, lying in Burgundy, which was not a royal possession either at that time. The horror that Cluny had lived with the appearance of the Cistercian movement in its midst and the revulsion this fundamentalism had caused among the Benedictines were such that he could not have been safer than there. This tolerant theocracy was on the verge of firmly adopting an internal coherency of thought leading to intolerance. Had Abelardlived five hundred years later, he would have gone up in flames. In the system of cognition elaborated by Abelard, who followed the teaching of Aristotle, an idea is deducted from a prior idea and there is no room for probabilities, for tolerance and adaptation. This elementary logic is easy to assimilate and follow. Plastered on primitive instincts and assertive creeds, ithas recently become the main leverage of human activity.

The Church as well as the secular authorities fostered the creation of Universities whose duty it was to sustain their respective hegemonic drives. The universities arose as corporations of professors and students, allowed by royal, imperial or papal decrees. The vocation of the universities was to consolidate the existing order, reinforce it and oppose changes that might challenge it. In the field of astronomy, John de Sacrobosco taught astronomy at the University of Paris in 1221. His book, De Sphaera, was exposing in the most elementary, rudimentary and simple terms the Ptolemaic astronomy and the Aristotelian cosmology (fig. 14.1).

Figure 14.1. The astronomer John of Sacrobosco, professor of mathematics and astronomy at the University of Paris wrote “De Sphaera” around 1221. The book was printed in Ferrare in 1472, 40years before the printing of the Almagest. Its contents were taught mindlessly in the universities of Europe during at least 400 years.

It was immediately adopted by all European universities and will be studied with the same disarming zeal until the 17th century, i.e. during 400 years, without critic or change. The theologians who had accepted a literal reading of the Bible contributed to freeze the cosmological debate.

The stultifying influence of the theologians on the progress of the Western understanding of the world is documented but the theologians were not alone to resist change. The vicissitudes of war and the pandemics (leprosy, pest, syphilis, tuberculosis, typhus) that plagued Europe (fig. 14.2.) forced naturally the monks to busy themselves with medicine and public health (fig. 14.3).

Figure 14.2. Lovers accompanied by death, 16th century, wood. TheReformation inspires the naturalism and secularism of this figure. The word “syphilis” derives from the Greek word “Syphos»,meaning horrible. Its origin is, according to Bartholomew de las Casas, American. It appeared in Europe in 1492 and became epidemic during the siege of Naples by the French king Charles VIII, in 1497. He had to break up the siege. Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France were both syphilitic. Wars,

prostitution and sodomy, all three common in those days, were theprincipal causes of the rapid spread of this disease. The city ofAberdeen was first to suspect contagion by sexual intercourse andbranded the cheek of prostitutes for their recognition, in an effort to stop the progression of the disease.

Figure 14.3. Abbot Richbodo of the imperial abbey Lorsch (located south of Hesse), wrote The Book of Medication around theyear 800.

Medicine is a prime concern for all civilizations. The grave of aNeanderthaler in Iraq (at Shanidar) 60.000 years ago, contained an abundance of plants of medicinal value: diuretic, emetic, astringents, pain relievers, and the stimulant ephedra. Hereunderare four of the oldest medicinal documents known:

Tscharaka-samhita is the title of the first written medical document from India, as early as 1000 B.C. The power of plants was central in most civilizations and knowledge of plants was synonymous with expertise in cures, which brought physicians close to rulers in prestige. It is thus normal that the priestlyclass that arose in Europe after the fall of Rome became interested in plants. The monks did so well that they were oftencalled outside their convents, to assist their patients. This exposed them to carnal temptations that the temporal and spiritual hierarchies reproved (fig. 14.4).

Figure 14.4. The regular frequenting of baths favored the corporal hygiene but also allowed additional pleasures, strongly stigmatized by the spiritual and temporal supreme authorities, depicted at the rear of this miniature taken from the “de dictis et facis Romanorum”, V. Maxime, 1470. Staatsbibliothek Preuszischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.

The Church transferred the medical knowledge to lay men, especially once cities arose. Soon, the universities taught medicine. The healing of patients rested essentially on plants. Igave in chapter 12.1 indications of the drift taken by medieval medicine toward exclusivity of practice and elimination of herbalists and midwifes, with a progressive loss of sound knowledge of plant activities. It was assumed that plants healed

diseases of those body parts which they resembled, others were supposed to cure bites and stings of animals which seemed to be mimicked by their leaves or stems.

Hound's-tong leaves were cures for illnesses of dogs or antidotesagainst dog bites. 2. Seeds in the pod of Malus punicus wereprescribed for toothache. 3. Chamomile was a remedy for eye

diseases. 4. The stamens of the Martagon Lilly were a cure forbaldness.

These universities, where the theologians who ruled Christendom were formed, actively supported the drive of the physicians for exclusivity in the dispensation of health care. The School of Medicine of Salerno obtained in 1240 from Frederic II the right to deliver to physicians the authorizations to exercise their profession. To obtain this authorization, one needed to follow during 5 years the courses of the School and practice during one year under the guidance of a confirmed physician. Obstetrics, pediatrics and surgery were neglected because “dirty”. Mindless teaching of the theories of Hippocrates, Galien and the Arab physicians (among them Razi, Averroes, Maimonides -a Jew- and essentially ibn Sina, i.e. Avicenna) together with a vigorous interference of the Inquisition or other established authority each time a teacher professed objectionable novelties (e.g. Berenger de Carpi, Vesale, Van Helmont) led to stultification. Petrarque wrote to pope Clement VI that "the physicians learn at our expense and become experts by repeatedly killing!"

Paracelsus, the official physician of Basel, contested in his teaching (Gross Wundarznei, published in 1537 in vernacular, God forbid!) the medicinal conceptions of Galen (2d century AD), which led to his banishment. He died at age 49 in dismal poverty at Salzburg, in 1541.

Students attacked Malpighi in his house and his Galienist colleagues publicly insulted him as late as 1661, in Bologna. VanLeeuwenhoek, who used a microscope to discover bacteria and confirm the circulation of blood from arteries to veins, spoke only Dutch, never left his city of Delft where he died in 1723 and never went to university, was vigorously combated by the faculty.

Between the 14th and 17th century, the intellectual elite of Europe managed to burn about 500,000 herbalists and midwifes, on the ground not that they were incompetent but because their competence was overwhelming, wherewith they trespassed the prerogatives of the contemporary physicians and barbers. In the 18th century, the behavior of physicians, their abstruse and empty language, their flashy dresses and their dogmatism brought about the vigorous critic of the Venetians Casanova and Goldini, and of the French marquise de Sevigne. The Austrian gynecologist Semmelweis was driven to suicide in 1865 for having discovered that gynecologists and surgeons were responsible for the infections observed in operated patients and delivered mothers,

because they operated with dirty hands. They continued to refuse to wash hands before an operation, and this also was the case in France.

14.2. Reason and Emotion

Our brain is severely handicapped for facing the challenges presented by the society of information in which we enter. The shortcomings are found at the level of perception of the externalworld, in our feeble capacity to handle numbers and in our inability to spontaneously think in logical terms.

14.2.1 Increments of cognition

I resume: The mathematical expertise and cognizance of nothingness acquired by the Mayas in the New World were not exploited further in that region of the globe. In the Old World, the Sumerians and the Babylonians developed mathematical tools. The subsequent attempt of the Assyrians to investigate in depth problems of division and multiplication was destroyed in ovo by the destruction of their civilization but the Babylonians eventually mastered the concept of nothingness, around the 3rd century BC. Alexander sent the Babylonian clay tablets bearing the sign of zero to Greek centers of research. These adopted the concept for their astronomical computations but declined to applyit to other fields. Despite the fact that the Greeks, in particular Archimedes, had adopted the heliocentric hypothesis inastronomy, they rejected the notion of actual (physical) infinity, which demanded from them an effort of imagination that was, at that time, not possible. This notion surfaced again with the priest Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), who was burned, not for this claim but for his religious deviancies. The Greeks also knewof potential (mathematical) infinity but could not handle it (e.g. the paradox of Zeno).

The concept of null made its way to India and to Islam, where geometry and algebra were integrated. This remarkable achievementwas not exploited further by these cultures. The null concept wasadopted by the industrious North Italian city-states and the whole of Christendom contributed thereafter to the unification ofthe various mathematical disciplines with the development of the notion of potential infinity. Within the Christian realm, England

provided the cultural environment most propitious for the development of a mathematical spirit focused on practical applications and the evolvement of a culture based on machinism and sciences. The trend was picked up by Germany but quenched there in the twentieth century by two crippling wars, in favor ofthe US. Calculus allowed the evolvement of computers, the backbones of the thinking brain, dominated by the Anglo-Saxons, sensu largo. France produced and still produces excellent mathematicians but the managerial elite of the country, as a general rule, dwarfs their skills.

14.2.2 Calculus

Our brain possesses 100 billion neurons and executes every secondbetween 1013 and 1019 elementary operations. Yet, the power of the brain for numerical calculus is ridiculously weak. The human brain is not comparable to a computer. The performances of our best mathematicians pale compared with those of our pocket calculators.

We organize and visualize numbers in a logarithmic way from the left to the right (those civilizations that write from right to left visualize numbers from right to left): we have a clear idea of the place of the small numbers along the visualized line but, as soon as we reach numbers higher than about 100, the distinction between the numbers becomes blurred. We see immediately that 5 is inferior to 9 but to grade 127649 versus 125649 is more difficult. This linear, oriented, deformed representation of numbers cannot be reprogrammed. A second shortcoming of our brain is that, despite its complexity, it is not able to reliably execute chains of operations. Whereas a few tens of neurons would be sufficient to effectuate complex mathematical calculations, our brain does not have these neurons and, to solve mathematical problems, engages in a complex processinvolving billions of neurons. The problem is aggravated by the very short-term memory of humans: usually, we are able to retain 7 numbers (the Chinese retain about 9) during about 2 seconds. Chimps possess a better short-term memory than American students.Finally, there is no doubt that gender plays a role in mathematical skills for the accomplishment of certain cerebral tasks. Men are superior to women as far as spatial orientation is

concerned: they find their way easier, which is important when treating geometrical notions or designing architectural objects.

In short, we have and will forever have difficulties in memorizing an agenda, verify our banking accounts, find back our way, optimize a road by looking at a map, evaluate the lapse of time with precision, all tasks in which accomplishment we are embarrassingly clumsy.

14.2.3 Errors in perception

The human species, like all other animal species, has devised sensory organs geared to the immediate perception of our environment, and adequate response to its challenges. The human brain has evolved to treat vital problems: analyze signals received by our senses, coordinate our movements and communicate with other members of the human species and with other animal species as dogs, horses, elephants. We very easily commit errors when relying on our senses. Visual errors of perception are easily induced. These two examples are well known:

The two horizontal lines have an identical length, the two small circles have the same diameter, although our perception of their size is different. Such errors are also found when the senses of taste and smell are solicited.

14.2.4 Logical reasoning

According to Jean Piaget (1896 - 1980), a biologist who turned psychologist at the University of Geneva, logic is the optimal form of biological adaptation. Aristotle pointed out that the essence of human reasoning is the “logos”, which was, according to him, the conjunction of logical reason and language. Language is an essential component of human reasoning. On these assumptions, Aristotle devised the “Organon”, which is a system of correct reasoning. Our capacity to think in a correct way depends on our capacity to name objects and manipulate concepts

in a correct way. Piaget discovered that the logical thought evolves from birth until adolescence. Information becomes logically coordinated in 14-15 years old adolescents. However, Descartes (1596-1650) showed that adult Man does not naturally and spontaneously think in logical terms. The average adult humanbeing commits quite easily errors in reasoning that stray away from logic. Adults make errors of deduction in a systematic way, which need to be corrected by a learning process. D. Kahneman rediscovered Descartes and devised a System I (i.e. biological intelligence) and a System II (i.e. logical reasoning) in 2012, as I expose in the introduction of this essay.

Here are two examples of bias in reasoning:

1A. if a (red) square is positioned left on a blackboard, there is obligatorily a (yellow) circle on its right.2A. if asked to select, among a number of forms and colors, the two that correspond to this statement, none of us will make a mistake. We all place a (yellow) circle to the right of the (red)square, as depicted here.

The challenge to correct reasoning is the following question:

1B. if there is no (red) square positioned left on the board, then there is a (yellow) circle on the right.2B. If asked to select on the board, among a number of forms (andcolors), the two that disprove this rule, 90% of adult human beings will again point out a (red) square left of a (yellow) circle because most humans remain hooked on the perception of theforms and colors mentioned (red) square and (yellow) circle), forget that the proposition 1B is a negation, and also forget that they must disprove it in 2B. The logical mind, i.e. about 10% of the adult world population, will choose “no (red) square” on the left, and add to the right a “no (yellow) circle”, for

example he will position a (blue) hexagon left of a (black) rectangle.

Another indication of shortcoming of our reasoning capabilities is:

1C. With 4 cards on a table, bearing the signs autumn, winter, summer and spring on their visible face, turn the 2 cards needed to show that, if there is an autumn on the visible side, then there is a summer on the other side.

1D. Most of us asked to solve this test of Wason will start by turning the card bearing an autumn and verify that the hidden side really bears a summer. This first move is correct. Thereafter, about 90% of the adult subjects will turn the card bearing visibly the sign summer, to verify that the hidden other side is an autumn. This second move is wrong: either the second card with a visible summer has indeed an autumn on the reverse side, and the rule is not disproved or else it bears a spring butthis does not invalidate the rule either. However, if the card bearing a visible spring has an autumn on its hidden side, then the rule is wrong. It is this card that needed to be verified.

How come that 90% of the adult humans choose the wrong card? It is because our brains work on economy. To solve the problem, we rely on the occipital and temporal parts of our brain, which correspond to vision and to a silent lecture of the enounced rules. During this silent lecture, the subject focuses on the words that evoke the colors, shapes, space and numbers, and not on logical connections. Our posterior brain focuses on “square”, “red”, “summer”, “left” etc. and we forget the instructions givenby the logical rule. We are geared to respond to the immediate perception of the external world, and this system is often very efficacious, but it is not adapted to abstract reasoning, hence

we commit errors although persuaded that the answer we gave was the correct one.

After being shown where the error was, we do not improve in our rational thinking and do the same error again when the same type of problems props up again. The best way to improve the access toa logical response, managed by the frontal lobe, with the result that the errors of interpretation do not occur anymore, is to inhibit the activity of the posterior parts of the brain. The deductive logic demands an inhibition of the perception, i.e. an abstraction. Paradoxically, this is achieved by appealing to emotion. Contrary to the opinion of Piaget, the human brain is not a cold and logical calculator. A. Damasio has shown that emotion aids in logical reasoning. Evolution has molded the brainin such a way that it feels the emotions necessary to inhibit non-adapted responses to environmental challenges that compromisesurvival (chapter 6 develops this subject). The teaching of the errors made in the exercise of logical reasoning is efficacious when the teaching is charged with an emotional content. When the subject who made an error is duly warned of the traps hidden in aquestion, when his attention is drawn on the fallacies that present impulsive perceptive connections, the teaching is fruitful in 90% of the cases and the frontal lobe becomes systematically involved in the solving of logical problems, with an abandon of the assistance of the posterior lobes.

Some civilizations have opted for a teaching of deductive logicalrules that relies on a cold abstract expose dissociated from any emotional content. Few students submitted to this drill will be able to overcome the errors of deductive logic this teaching is supposed to prevent. They will persevere in error although persuaded that their answer to the challenge is the correct one. In contemporary France, facing tremendous economic development problems, it is currently asserted that the elites tried during the last 40 years everything that did not work. This is because they are unable to overcome errors of deductive logic. One example of error in reasoning was the following: “there are a number of people without work. The number of hours worked in a day is 8. Let us reduce this number to 7, which corresponds to roughly 10%. Employers will through this measure be forced to

hire ten per cent more employees to do the job. This measure was actually enforced in 1998. Its long term effect was to increase the joblessness of the country. It is still in force in 2014.

Other civilizations will not appeal at all to deductive rules of reasoning. Mindless teaching of texts assimilated by reliance on memory unchallenged by emotion, characterize stereotyped social conducts that may be laden with abhorrent features.

14.3. The Human Self-evaluation

One of the unique products of the thinking brain is the evaluation of events and self with a good or bad gloss. This universal human preoccupation with good and bad is not manifestedin animals. The key neural component of this type of judgment is the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, an area tucked into the crease between the two cerebral hemispheres. I described this organ in chapter 6. It plays a critical role in evaluating the outcomes ofone's behaviors and makes subjective judgments about whether outcomes are good or bad.

Although the list of features humans select as good is constrained by the hominid genome, each person’s actual selections are not written in their genome. Culture makes a significant contribution to the concepts good and bad, notwithstanding intelligence, wealth, power or special talent.

14.4. Strive to Reason: The Enlightenment

Despite the widely advertised claims of France and England as thesources of Enlightenment, there is no doubt that its radiance derived from the Dutch Spinoza (1632-1677), who raised damaginglyunanswerable questions about the validity of theology. Spinoza challenged received ideas about God. Central to Hebraic and Christian doctrines are the miracles and the casting out of devils. By alleging that God and nature were two names for the same thing, Spinoza made clear that witches and devilish forces pertained to a supernatural that was a logically impossible domain. Devils and angels could not exist because nothing could be outside God, who is Nature. Belief in miracles was a symptom of unreasonable ignorance. Spinoza did not deny the existence of

God but asserted that a specific God, be He Christian, Hebraic orMuslim, was spurious. Spinoza was not only a philosopher but alsoa practical scientist. Claiming that reason and intellect do the real work, proceeding on the basis of experiment, he prefigured Karl Popper, for whom the scientific theories precede the experiments that may prove or disprove them. Human progress depends on the primacy of rational ideas, not on the accumulationof experimental data. Spinoza emphasized that what is important is not doing the sums right but doing the right sums.

Spinoza preferred practical remedies for practical problems. Abstract principles are no substitute for practical-minded engagement of the subject under investigation. His humane approach to the understanding of the world by the application of reason tempered by observation was waved on the side by the undueinfluence of mechanics and abstract mathematical methods on the received idea of what intelligent problem-solving should be. Deduction in the style of Euclid, mechanically predictable and rigorous laws in the style of Galileo and Newton, indubitable certainty in the style of Descartes exerted a malign influence insofar as they overshadowed a looser, more pragmatic and less abstract concept of reasonableness. The damage was inflicted by Newton (1642-1727), whose dynamic came to be regarded as the ideal model to which all forms of rational thinking should aspire. But the greatest damage was inflicted a century later by Laplace (1749-1827). According to Laplace, the universe was strictly deterministic and, following his lead, all sciences became unadvisedly modeled on mathematical physics. Inappropriatemathematical rationality was preferred over open-minded and informal reasonableness, with dramatic results on progress in humanness (fig. 14.5).

Figure 14.5. In the 16th century, the Flemish Th. Van Thulden painted the victory of wisdom over stupidity, which brings abundance. Today, he would have painted the contrary.

14.5. Demographic Inflation

The life span of human adults in preindustrial societies worldwide averaged 25 to 30 years, with record life expectancies noticed in some countries as Sweden and Sardinia, and some peculiar habitats as the abbeys of Christendom. In Sardinia, men and women have the same life expectancy and centenarians are not uncommon. The reason for this longevity is unknown.

Liberalism, this fantastic tool for human progress, allowed the development of an industrial civilization that is a magnitude more evolved than anything directed economies ever achieved. The modern Western State goes out of its way to keep the newly born children alive and provide the families with the means of sustenance deemed necessary for their raising. In addition, the improvements in health care have considerably prolonged the livesof the elderly. Before 1950, most of the gain in life expectancy was due to reduction in death rate at young age. In the second half of the 20th century, the length of people's lives rose. World life expectancy more than doubled over the past three centuries from roughly 25 years to about 65 for men and 70 for women. In 1840, Swedish women lived a world-record 45 years. Today, the longest expectation of life is 85 years, for Japanese

women. Record life expectancy has also risen for men, with a gap between male and female levels growing from 2 to 6 years 2. In postindustrial societies, female life expectancy has risen for 160 years at a steady pace of almost 3 months per year and there is no reason to think that this constancy will come to an abrupt end.

In modern times, few in the West have dared to propose a severe control of the natality. Natality measures are an enormous and successful scandal. Avocation of a demographic inflation, always reassuring to sovereign Nation-states, works with astonishing success. It requires more moral courage to stop procreation than to oppose war. It is considered moral and legitimate to favor natality and immoral to restrict it. To this is added the belief that an overpopulation is necessary to secure the brains needed for social or technological progress, although it is the contrarythat is true: when the struggle for life is arduous, no resourcesor time can be diverted from the struggle.

Overpopulation is, contrary to Malthusian’ belief, not a reason for return to savagery. Human beings are not rats, and congregations of humans do not lead, per se, to a savage behavior. The number of homicides is not directly correlated to the density of the population. However, population excess has a severe diminishing impact on development, and political leaders have a tendency to reduce the number of people they have the pretension to take in charge.

With the development of technology, the number of men who could be diverted from essential economic tasks augmented regularly. The volume of armed forces consequently augmented. Every progressin machines and rationalization of the means of production liberate people who may be killed without paralyzing the country.Respect for personality, which was once the essential characteristic of European mentality, made room for the perception of human societies as a passive multitude. The permanent overabundance of mentally stunted people induced the belief that the living are interchangeable and that the dead are replaceable. Napoleon engaged 600,000 French soldiers in the Russian campaign, of which 580,000 did not return home. Their

epitaph by Napoleon was "a night in Paris will make me forget allthis".

Technological progress allowed the advent of conscription, first installed by France during the Revolution. With the modern inflation of soldiers who cost less to maintain than do unemployed and are available in seemingly unending numbers as said by Hitler, the concept of total war made its way. Hitler poured immense numbers of young people in a war that he thought would last only a few months. Most of these young soldiers, well prepared for combat in the "Hitlerjugend", offered early victories to the tyrant but were eventually killed in combat. Theoperation Barbarossa, i.e. invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941,opposed 4.5 million Soviet soldiers to 3 million German soldiers.On average, the German army lost 2000 men per day on the East front. They were the cause of the army's early successes but their early death was the cause of the army's collapse when the war dragged on for years.

In year 2002, the nationalist Indian government envisioned with serenity the use of atomic weapons of mass destruction against Pakistan, to maintain the status quo in its disputed Kashmir province: it figured that the killing of 100 million Indians by nuclear weapons would still leave 900 million of them left to conquer a Pakistan whose bombed population of 100 million would have dwindled to zero! This callousness no doubt prompted the Pakistani government to acquire nuclear weapons, a goal that Iranis strenuously pursuing today, and rightly so. Iran attacked noneof its neighbours for the past 250 years but the reverse is not true. The country is surrounded by nuclear powers (India, Pakistan, Israel, Russia on land and Israel, Pakistan, The UK, the USA and France in the South by nuclear submarines of which there is no doubt that Israel will not hesitate to use them.

Today, about 10% of the world population uses up about 65% of theworld's resources. Only an additional 10% of the world populationwill be allowed to rise its standard of living to the same level.If more than 10% of the deprived population claims improved standards of living, this will only be possible at the expenses of the West and Japan, whose living standards will have to decline. By 2020, about 1.2 billion people (20% of the world’s

population) will enter their childbearing years. Some 90% of those entering reproductive age will be in the developing world. Since hardly any investment is currently made in the development of new forms of contraception, one may expect a major problem to burst open in a few decades from now.

14.6. Patriotism versus Nationalism

In France, the right of the soil (jus soli) was a feal heritage: all serfs born on an estate remained bound to it for life. Louis XIV reinforced this tendency. His insatiability ended with a French military discomfiture that exacerbated the nationalism of the country, which generated the French revolution. Napoleon, whoneeded soldiers and who had extended the borders of the Empire tothe Baltic Sea and the Adriatic, wanted to legalize this right ofthe soil into a text, the Code Napoleon, so that nobody could escape conscription (40 months). He was disavowed in 1803 and theright of the blood (jus sanguinis) was instated, apparently to discard undesirable elements of the population. The hatred of theJew was very strong in those days in France. The right of the soil was reinstated in 1889, which led the government of Petain, during W.W.II, to denaturalize 15154 Jews, most of them immediately deported.

The French' 1789 proclamation "Vive la Nation" rapidly became a source of legends, myths and misunderstandings in the political culture of the surrounding European countries. The laic stance and excesses of the French Revolution, which planted in front of village churches, "trees of Reason" to worship,

In 1790, the revolutionaries planted 60.000 trees of reason inFrance and more in occupied countries. Anyone caught destroying a

tree was executed.

which persecuted priests, nuns and Jews, which destroyed wantonlythe Christian heritage of the nation and of conquered neighboringnations, which subordinated the individual destinies of the people to that of the nation, which eagerly exported the nationalist revolution to neighboring lands, which imprisoned thepope, were perceived by Schiller and Goethe as foreign to the European cultural history. Schiller observed in 1797 that the German Reich and the German nation are two different entities. The majesty of the people never crowned the head of its rulers and is indifferent to the political fate of the State. According to Goethe and Schiller, there exist for all nations a State Policy and a Spiritual History. Patriotism, the love of one's country, one’s home, one’s tongue, and one’s history is a living sentiment that signifies an emotional and conscious alliance withthe people who participate in the same historical fate.